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Lord Iames Osari
2006-08-14, 07:37 PM
I first created Insanity feats back for the Psionics contest, and since Psionic Devotee requested that more be made, here they are. I have re-posted the original three feats here as well.

Madness [Insanity, Psionic]
Your mind has snapped under the strain of your psionic powers.
Prerequisites: Any chaotic alignment, ability to manifest psionic powers or the phrenic template.
Benefit: You gain immunity to all effects that cause confusion or insanity, but take a -2 penalty on interaction skills (Bluff, Diplomacy, Gather Information, Handle Animal, Intimidate, Sense Motive). This penalty worsens by 1 for each additional insanity feat you possess.

Mad Clarity [Insanity, Psionic]
Your madness sometimes makes you difficult to control, but other times you are easily manipulated.
Prerequisite: Madness.
Benefit: Every time you must make a Will save, you receive a +1d20-11 insanity bonus on your saving throw. For each insanity feat you possess, including this one, your insanity bonus to Will saves increases by 1.

Shifting Madness [Insanity, Psionic]
The mercurial nature of your madness makes you difficult to control.
Prerequisites: Madness, Mad Clarity, one mental ability score 15+.
Benefit: You gain the slippery mind trait, but take a -2 penalty on Concentration checks.
[hr]
Mad Resilience [Insanity, Psionic]
In your madness, you are harder to kill.
Prerequisites: Madness, Psionic Body, one mental ability score 15+.
Benefit: You gain damage reduction equal to the number of Insanity feats you possess, including this one. This damage reduction cannot be overcome. This is a supernatural ability.

Surging Madness [Insanity, Psionic]
Your madness sometimes gives you great power.
Prerequisite: Madness, one mental ability score 15+, non-wilder or wilder level 4th.
Benefit: You gain the wild surge and psychic enervation abilities of a 1st-level wilder. You use your character level in place of your wilder level for the purposes of psychic enervation.
Special: You may take this feat multiple times. Each time you do, your wild surge ability improves one step. However, you must use your wild surge ability at its maximum power. If you are already a wilder, your wild surge ability goes up by one step.

Mad Resistance [Insanity, Psionic]
Your madness grants you resistance to energy of a certain type.
Prerequisites: Madness.
Benefit: Choose an energy type (acid, cold, electricity, fire, sonic). You gain energy resistance 5 to that energy type. This is a supernatural ability.
Special: You may take this feat up to five times. Each time you take it, you must choose a different energy type.

Improved Mad Resistance [Insanity, Psionic]
Your madness grants you greater resistance to energy of a certain type.
Prerequisites: Madness, Mad Resistance.
Benefit: You gain energy resistance equal to your highest mental ability score to the energy type for which you have taken Mad Resistance. The energy resistance granted by this feat does not stack with that granted by the Mad Resistance feat. This is a supernatural ability.
Special: You may take this feat up to five times. Each time you take it, you must choose a different energy type.

Greater Mad Resistance [Insanity, Psionic]
Your madness can grant you immunity to energy of a certain type.
Prerequisites: Madness, Mad Resistance, Improved Mad Resistance.
Benefit: While you have your psionic focus, you gain immunity to energy damage of a type for which you have taken the Improved Mad Resistance feat. This is a supernatural ability. If you have the Mad Resistance and Improved Mad Resistance feats for more than one energy type, this feat can only apply to one energy type at a time.
Special: If you take this feat, you may not take the Mad Symbiosis feat.

Mad Symbiosis [Insanity, Psionic]
You have a special affinity for a particular type of energy.
Prerequisites: Improved Mad Resistance, Madness, Mad Resistance, Privileged Energy.
Benefit: While you have your psionic focus, you lose the energy resistance granted by your Mad Resistance and Improved Mad Resistance feats, and whenever you would take energy damage of that type, you take no damage but are instead healed a number of hit points equal to the energy damage that would have been done. This is a supernatural ability.
Special: You may only take this feat if the energy type selected for Privileged Energy matches the one you selected for Mad Resistance and Improved Mad Resistance. If you have this feat, you may not take the Greater Mad Resistance feat.

Greater Surging Madness [Insanity, Psionic]
Your madness sometimes gives you even greater power.
Prerequisite: Madness, Surging Madness or wild surge class ability, one mental ability score 17+.
Benefit: When you activate your wild surge ability, you can choose to spend an action point. If you do, roll a number of d6s (or d8s, if you have the Action Boost feat) equal to the bonus wild surge would normally give you. The result of the highest single die roll is added to your normal wild surge bonus for this round. Add the number of dice you rolled to your character level for the purpose of psychic enervation. If you become psychically enervated, you are dazed for an additional number of rounds equal to your (improved) wild surge bonus.
Special: You must use your wild surge ability at its maximum power.
[hr]
Also, I have decided that this feat, created by The Demented One, counts as an insanity feat. I have altered the format and wording slightly to be consistent with the other feats presented here.

Mad Insight [General, Insanity]
Though your sanity is lacking, you occasionally have brilliant insights.
Prerequisites: Wis 7 or lower.
Benefit: Once per day, you may apply a +5 insanity bonus to an Intelligence check or Intelligence-based skill check.

Lord Iames Osari
2006-08-15, 11:43 AM
Oh, come on, people! The Demented One has at least 5 times as many feats in his Many, Many, MORE Feats! thread, and he's got 3 pages of responses. Okay, more like 2 pages, since the first page is pretty much all feats, but still...

NullAshton
2006-08-15, 12:48 PM
Muuwaahaahaaa... These feats plus transmorgifist or master of many forms equals AWESOMENESS.

Lord Iames Osari
2006-08-15, 02:20 PM
Thank you for your comment, NullAshton. Does anyone see any game balance issues? Or issues of clarity?


(I hate action points for not having any psionic uses.)

Fear not, fellow gamer! I shall create a psionic feat involving AP forthwith!

Edit - Added.

SilveryCord
2006-08-15, 07:39 PM
Hehe, it's great. I love it :)

martyboy74
2006-08-15, 09:20 PM
Ah good, now those penalties can really start stacking up. -22 to diplomacy checks here I come! ;D

storybookknight
2006-08-16, 01:24 AM
Your first two feats are okay - the third grants an ability that's usually reserved for higher-level characters, but with the mitigating penalties it's workable, I think.

Edit: Now that I think about it, anyone taking only Madness and Mad Clarity has an average +15 to their will saves. Mad Clarity probably needs to be reworked.

Mad Resilience is a little overpowered - I mean, if you're a mad Grey elf with 20 Int, that means that you can burn 2 feats to gain DR 10/-, if I understand correctly.

Since mental scores aren't strictly specified so far (though from the flavor, I gather they should have been), this means that the Mad Dwarven Psychic warrior with 20 con could also have DR 10/-; but at 2nd level. Human Psychic Warriors can get DR 9/- at first level.

Surging Madness seems... inappropriate in that it renders nonexclusive the main benefit to being a wilder, and makes members of that group more powerful then they should be by rights, giving level 1 characters potential access to level 2 spell equivalents.

Mad Resistance is underpowered; I also fail to see how craziness prevents you from being set on fire.

Improved Mad Resistance is like Mad Resistance, only... worse. It requires you to boost one attribute to 22 or better to be effective, and at that point gives a one-point bonus to a fairly pithy resistance trait. I still fail to see how craziness protects you from hydrochloric acid.

Mad Symbiosis has a 3-feat prerequisite, but confers practical immortality as long as the crazy person is bathed in molten lava. This is slightly more powerful than most current psionic feats.

NullAshton
2006-08-16, 08:11 AM
Yeah, it should probally be something like one HP per dice of damage done, or something for Mad Symbiosis.

Isn't greater surging madness a little too powerful? A wilder with that power with enough levels could have damage in the 30d6/40d6 range.

Lord Iames Osari
2006-08-16, 02:31 PM
Your first two feats are okay - the third grants an ability that's usually reserved for higher-level characters, but with the mitigating penalties it's workable, I think.

Edit: Now that I think about it, anyone taking only Madness and Mad Clarity has an average +15 to their will saves. Mad Clarity probably needs to be reworked.

What if there was a steeper base Will penalty, with additional minuses per additional Insanity feat? Or if the penalty per Insanity feat was decreased, say to -2 or -3?


Mad Resilience is a little overpowered - I mean, if you're a mad Grey elf with 20 Int, that means that you can burn 2 feats to gain DR 10/-, if I understand correctly.

Since mental scores aren't strictly specified so far (though from the flavor, I gather they should have been), this means that the Mad Dwarven Psychic warrior with 20 con could also have DR 10/-; but at 2nd level. Human Psychic Warriors can get DR 9/- at first level.

You're right; I should have specified mental scores. I'll go back and fix that. Edit: Done. And I had a thought. What if it granted DR 5/-, with +1 DR per Insanity feat you had, and your ability scores were ignored? Or something... The feat now grants DR equal to your highest mental ability mod + 1 per Insanity feat you have


Surging Madness seems... inappropriate in that it renders nonexclusive the main benefit to being a wilder, and makes members of that group more powerful then they should be by rights, giving level 1 characters potential access to level 2 spell equivalents.

Um... What if there were more Prerequisites? Or if it cost an AP to activate? Edit: added a prerequisite to prevent 1st-level wilders from taking it.


Mad Resistance is underpowered; I also fail to see how craziness prevents you from being set on fire.

Improved Mad Resistance is like Mad Resistance, only... worse. It requires you to boost one attribute to 22 or better to be effective, and at that point gives a one-point bonus to a fairly pithy resistance trait. I still fail to see how craziness protects you from hydrochloric acid.

Well, ordinary craziness wouldn't keep you from being set on fire, but (most of) these feats are for psionic craziness. If you and others think that means it should require psionic focus or something, I'm okay with that. Edit - Oh, and I figured out what you meant with Improved Mad Resistance. You were misreading the feat. It says that you gain energy resistance equal to your highest mental ability score, not your highest mental ability score modifier.


Mad Symbiosis has a 3-feat prerequisite, but confers practical immortality as long as the crazy person is bathed in molten lava. This is slightly more powerful than most current psionic feats.

Would requiring psionic focus make this better? Edit - Mad Symbiosis now requires psionic focus.


Isn't greater surging madness a little too powerful? A wilder with that power with enough levels could have damage in the 30d6/40d6 range.

True. However, both the chance of suffering psychic enervation and the penalty imposed by PE would increase, which I saw as a balancing factor. I mean, eventually if you go high enough, you'll hit a 100% chance of suffering psychic enervation, and the power point loss would be pretty steep.


Wild Surge (Su)
A wilder can let her passion and emotion rise to the surface in a wild surge when she manifests a power. During a wild surge, a wilder gains phenomenal psionic strength, but may harm herself by the reckless use of her power (see Psychic Enervation, below).

A wilder can choose to invoke a wild surge whenever she manifests a power. When she does so, she gains +1 to her manifester level with that manifestation of the power. The manifester level boost gives her the ability to augment her powers to a higher degree than she otherwise could; however, she pays no extra power point for this wild surge. Instead, the additional 1 power point that would normally be required to augment the power is effectively supplied by the wild surge.

Level-dependent power effects are also improved, depending on the power a wilder manifests with her wild surge.

This improvement in manifester level does not grant her any other benefits (psicrystal abilities do not advance, she does not gain higher-level class abilities, and so on).

She cannot use the Overchannel psionic feat and invoke her wild surge at the same time.

At 3rd level, a wilder can choose to boost her manifester level by two instead of one. At 7th level, she can boost her manifester level by up to three; at 11th level, by up to four; at 15th level, by up to five; and at 19th level, by up to six.

In all cases, the wild surge effectively pays the extra power point cost that is normally required to augment the power; only the unaugmented power point cost is subtracted from the wilder’s power point reserve.

Psychic Enervation (Ex)
Pushing oneself by invoking a wild surge is dangerous. Immediately following each wild surge, a wilder may be overcome by the strain of her effort. The chance of suffering psychic enervation is equal to 5% per manifester level added with the wild surge.

A wilder who is overcome by psychic enervation is dazed until the end of her next turn and loses a number of power points equal to her wilder level.


A 7th-level wilder with Madness, Surging Madness, and Greater Surging Madness has a wild surge of +4. He spends an action point and rolls 4d6, then adds the total to his manifester level. Since the average result of 4d6 is around 14-ish, that gives him a 70% chance of suffering psychic enervation. And if he does, he loses not 7 but 11 pp, because of the effect of Greater Surging Madness.

Lord Iames Osari
2006-08-16, 08:58 PM
Mad Clarity now gives a -2 Will penalty per Insanity feat.

martyboy74
2006-08-16, 09:05 PM
I sense that feat being useful at low levels, but not at high ones.

NullAshton
2006-08-17, 08:31 AM
So he loses some power points and is dazed... So? Make sure everyone is within 40 feet of you, use an energy burst, augment it to the highest it will go with the electricity energy type... Average DC of 28, 21d6 of damage, 36.75 even on a successful save. Noone has evasion at that point, so make your reflex save or become a tiny little burnt cinder.

Wilder is dazed next turn, and loses 11 pp. But did an energy burst at manifester level 21.

Lord Iames Osari
2006-08-17, 01:34 PM
Um, rogues and monks get evasion @ 2nd level, 5 levels before 7th level. If you meant that no-one has IMPROVED evasion, that is correct.

What if the duration of the dazedness was extended?

martyboy74
2006-08-17, 02:42 PM
Um, rogues and monks get evasion @ 2nd level, 5 levels before 7th level. If you meant that no-one has IMPROVED evasion, that is correct.

What if the duration of the dazedness was extended?
Tthat'd be good, maybe by the number of extra dice you choose to roll.

Lord Iames Osari
2006-08-17, 03:16 PM
That's what I was thinking. Edit - Done. Since the number of extra dice you roll is the same as your wild surge bonus, I just used that.

The Glyphstone
2006-08-21, 11:53 AM
I have GOT to be reading Greater Surging Madness wrong...as it is, it looks like a 15th level wilder could spend an action point to increase his manifester level by 5d6 instead of +5 - potentially a 45th-level manifester...with only a 25% chance of backfiring, losing 20PP and extra-long daze afterwards...

The Demented One
2006-08-21, 11:59 AM
I have GOT to be reading Greater Surging Madness wrong...as it is, it looks like a 15th level wilder could spend an action point to increase his manifester level by 5d6 instead of +5 - potentially a 45th-level manifester...with only a 25% chance of backfiring, losing 20PP and extra-long daze afterwards...
You aren't reading it wrong. 'Tis severely overpowered.

The_Shaman
2006-08-21, 03:08 PM
Mad resilience seems a rather powerful ability, easily able to duplicate a barbarian's resistance at its peak (for someone with an intelligence of 20 and a few feats, a DR 8/- is nothing to sneer at). Still, for me it would be more interesting if people could share some insights in properly playing an insane character.

While what you are discussing about the wilder may be true, I've never played a game where we had action points. Besides, come on - having 11 powers for your entire career is about as bad as it gets for sorcerers. I haven't played a wilder, but they don't seem overpowered or something. Even warlocks are more adaptable than that.

Lord Iames Osari
2006-08-22, 07:10 PM
I have GOT to be reading Greater Surging Madness wrong...as it is, it looks like a 15th level wilder could spend an action point to increase his manifester level by 5d6 instead of +5 - potentially a 45th-level manifester...with only a 25% chance of backfiring, losing 20PP and extra-long daze afterwards...

Actually, if the ML got all the way up to 45, that'd be a +30 wild surge, which results in a 150% chance of suffering psychic enervation, which results in the loss of 20 pp and 3 minutes of dazedness. That's 30 rounds.

martyboy74
2006-08-22, 07:27 PM
Actually, if the ML got all the way up to 45, that'd be a +30 wild surge, so a 150% chance of suffering psychic enervation, which results in the loss of 20 pp and 3 minutes of dazedness. That's 30 rounds.
True, but by that point you're buffing an energy burst up to the point where it's got a save around 40, and deals 45d6+45 points of damage, fortitdue half. Tell me that's not broken at 15th level, and you're insane.

Lord Iames Osari
2006-08-22, 07:37 PM
Okay, now stop telling me how broken it is and help me fix it.

martyboy74
2006-08-22, 07:39 PM
Okay, now stop telling me how broken it is and help me fix it.
What I was originally interpreting it as, was you rolled X dice, and the highest roll was the number that you added to your manifester level. However, you'd keep the penalties for rolling multiple dice, to make them make the descision of how far in they want to delve. That'd be much more balanced.

sandman09
2006-08-23, 11:02 AM
in general, i think that your feats are great, and seem inovative...offering good compensation.
good for you!

Lord Iames Osari
2006-08-23, 11:12 AM
What I was originally interpreting it as, was you rolled X dice, and the highest roll was the number that you added to your manifester level. However, you'd keep the penalties for rolling multiple dice, to make them make the descision of how far in they want to delve. That'd be much more balanced.

Sort of went with your idea. The result of the highest singe die roll is now added to your normal wild surge bonus.

Lord Iames Osari
2006-08-26, 06:54 AM
Bumpitty. Did some editing of the feat descriptions and prerequisites.

Pegasos989
2006-08-26, 10:26 AM
I gotta admit I am not completely familiar with psionics (I understand the rules but have never played one, so no experience).

I noticed atleast 2 wierd feats.

The one giving DR... It is an epic feat to get DR 3/-. Even though it is a bit weak, I fail to see how a feat that gives mental stat mod (That can be over +10 at high levels) AND additional points for having other feats would be even near balanced. Either I didn't get this feat correctly or it is just Mad and not in a good way.

Also, the feat givin +1d20 to save is mad. Okay, you need to have 2 feats so total of -4 but you get +1d20, so the bonus on will saves is from -3 to +16. That is so far above the norma +2 from feat that it is wierd.
I think that the flavour of feat would fit that 50-50 to get bonuses or penalties but to make it worth taking, a bit better than that. Maybe it would add +1d20-10 (so you would get -9 to +10) and +1 per insanity feat? (So with 3 feats, -6 to +13)...

Lord Iames Osari
2006-08-26, 11:04 AM
Point taken about the DR. If it was 1 DR per insanity feat, would that be better? Remembering that the DR is a supernatural ability and can be suppressed by dispel magic/psionics and antimagic fields.

And for the Mad Clarity feat, I like that idea.

Edit - Done.

Pegasos989
2006-08-26, 11:16 AM
Point taken about the DR. If it was 1 DR per insanity feat, would that be better? Remembering that the DR is a supernatural ability and can be suppressed by dispel magic/psionics and antimagic fields.

And for the Mad Clarity feat, I like that idea.

Edit - Done.

Didn't even realize that it can surpressed... Hmm. This the common "If it is like this, it is too powerful but if I nerf it, is it still worth taking...". Compared to epic feat it is certainly, but I am a bit unsure.
As we remember that it all depends on the amount of insanity feats, it should be thought that who need that DR worth sacrifing feats and how many insanity feats they will have.
Haven't thought about psiWarriors enough to decide how many insanity feats they would like to have. If it is 4 or under, this seems a bit weak (And could become something like 1+amount of insanity feats), if it is more, that is a very nice feat like that.


EDIT: Gave it some thought. I think I like the current version.